Satisfaction Brought It Back
by IzzyBells
Summary: ***This is a sequel to Curiosity Killed The Cat-go read that first! Caterine returns to the land of the "living," but she is faced with a government she doesn't want anymore, and friends that don't remember her. Cat needs to fix their memories, but how? Rated for blood, mild language, possible violence. (previously "But Cats Have Nine Lives")
1. Prologue

**AN: Guess who finally got around to writing a sequel? Yep. Me. Years later. Sorry about the long wait! Yes, this is the sequel to Curiosity Killed the Cat, and yes, you will have no idea what's going on if you don't read that first, so go read that first! It was the first multichap story I had ever actually finished, even if it ended on a huge cliffhanger (sorry about that), so I'm pretty proud of it? I'll admit it was a pretty simple plot, but hey, give me a break, it was my first long story and it was successful enough, I think. I promise this one will be better in quality, because, you know, I have twoish years of extra experience under my belt now AND I made it through a notoriously difficult English class that really helped me to improve my writing, even if it was hell to go through.**

 _ **A quick timeframe recap: CKtC ended somewhere in 2013, my story begins in February of 2016.**_

Caterine DuRien came back to consciousness with spasming muscles and a painful tightness in her chest, a feeling that would have brought back ancient memories of her violent transformation a thousand years ago if she could think at all. Her throat closed up and her lungs heaved and pumped with no effect, not that she needed any air, and her jaw locked, the muscles twitching and clenching uncomfortably. She realized that she could not calm any part of her body. She almost panicked. A terrible ringing began in her ears, quiet at first, and then gradually louder until she was sure it would deafen her from the inside, and then the ringing gave way to real external sound: someone was worriedly repeating her name over and over. "Caterine, Caterine, can you hear me? Caterine, Caterine, Caterine, can you hear me?" the voice said.

Her eyes snapped open, she shot upright with a snarl, her hand shot out to the side, her fingers clenched around flesh-

"Caterine! Caterine, let go, let go, can you hear me, Caterine? Let go!" someone else shouted from her other side.

Her head snapped to the new voice, and then her eyes finally caught up with her brain. Cat winced at the blinding white around her. Quickly the light faded and she could make out blurry shapes of color, which sharpened and sharpened until she saw a slightly blurry woman with a large mass of dark hair and a white lab coat to her right, the woman's hands held up in what was either a calming, appealing, or surrendering manner. Cat's haywire senses swerved around to her other side, and suddenly she lost focus on the doctor-she was a doctor, wasn't she?-with the dark hair and she could hear the sounds of someone choking and sputtering. She snapped her head to her other side to see her own fuzzy hand gripping a fuzzy man's neck so tightly that he seemed to be turning a vague shade of purple, which registered somewhere in her scattered thoughts as very bad, but she found it difficult to let go, to make her muscles obey and release the man. She felt something pierce her in the back of the neck, then, and she found herself able to relax a moment later, and her thoughts slowed down, and she took her hand from the man's neck. He doubled over, taking in large gasps of air.

"Caterine, Caterine, look at me, face this way," the woman said gently. Cat turned her head to her other side again, slower this time. "I gave you a muscle relaxer, okay? We need to get some blood in you, get some oxygen to your brain. That will help you, I promise, blood will make you feel better," she continued, talking in soothing and even tones.

The doctor-Cat still assumed she was a doctor-held up a needle and catheter for Cat to see, and slowly advanced towards the vampire's neck. With gentle touches and pressure, the woman tilted Cat's head up and to the side, carefully inserting the equipment into her carotid artery, taped down the tubing, released Caterine and slowly backed away. Cat followed the woman with her eyes, remaining completely still, watching as she rolled a metal stand to the side of the bed Cat belatedly realized she was sitting in. She eyed the dangling bag of blood, suddenly yearning to sink her fangs into it. The woman returned to Caterine's neck, connected the tubes, slowly backed away again, set the drip to a fast pace and switched on the pump, and made her way, still moving slowly and smoothly, to the opposite side of Cat's bed to inspect the man Caterine had choked.

As soon as the blood hit her system, the pump pushing the oxidized fluid up to her brain, Cat's senses began to clear up: her vision gradually returned to normal from its blurriness; her ears stopped focusing on single directions at a time and sharpened to its usual state. Her head cleared next. She could think straight, and she didn't feel as distant or foggy as she did before.

"I'll be back in a few minutes, Caterine," the woman said, and led the man, who she now noticed was wearing scrubs, out of the room.

The blood continued to revive her, the muscle relaxer continued to keep her calm and somewhat sedated. Cat began recapping everything she remembered before her world dissolved into the fuzzy black of stasis. She remembered Adeline, she remembered Molly and John and Sherlock, she remembered how Adeline tampered with their memories, she remembered how Adeline had tackled Cat after the vampire threatened the mage, how Adeline forced Cat's mouth open, how Adeline poured the stasis serum into her mouth and over her fangs, how Adeline clamped down on her jaw and over her lips and forced the bitter stasis serum, never meant for anything other than intravenous administration, up Cat's fangs and to her brain with her magic, how Adeline had laughed and laughed as everything slowly went black, how Cat had been struggling and thrashing and angry and panicked the entire time.

There. That must be it. Stasis serum should only ever be administered when the individual is calm and relatively still. A calm entrance into stasis makes for a cam exit out of stasis. A violent entrance into stasis must've made for a doubly worse exit out of stasis. Her trouble also probably had something to do with the method of administration. Anything through the fangs that wasn't blood was always an awful idea.

The woman in the white coat returned with a scrub-wearing blonde this time. "How are you feeling, Caterine?"

The vampire cleared her throat and sucked in some air. "Better now," she croaked. "Thank you. I apologize-will he be okay? The man that was with you before?"

"He's bruised and shaken, but no lasting damage was done. You only had a hold on him for about a minute; he never lost consciousness. I'm sure there are no hard feelings. You reacted on instinct." The woman smiled. "I'm Dr. Awojobi."

"Nice to meet you. Where am I?" It was a little uncomfortable to talk with an IV hooked up to her neck.

"Hospital of the Underneath. You were in stasis for a little under three years. I'm...surprised that you came out of it so violently and so in need of blood. Three years is a short time compared to how long your usual stases are, according to our records."

"It was Adeline. She forced it through my fangs, I was struggling and panicked. Violent entrance..."

"And violent exit," Dr. Awojobi finished. She sighed, and Cat could smell the woman's pity. "Ms. Jacobs has been in custody with an eternal sentence. As I recall it, your unscheduled and multiple stases that night alerted the authorities down here, and our people apprehended Ms. Jacobs shortly after you entered your last stasis," she told Caterine. "She hadn't tampered with your memories yet; we had another mage check. All your memories are correct and your own."

"She tampered with three mortals," Caterine stated, thinking of her friends. "Did someone fix them, too?"

"We are bound by the Treaty to meddle as little as possible. You know this, I'm sure. We tracked where Ms. Jacobs teleported them to and returned them to their residences, buried their memories of the encounter with Ms. Jacobs."

"But did you reverse Adeline's damage?" Cat demanded.

Dr. Awojobi held her hands up in a calming gesture. "Ms. Jacobs hid your nature from them, which is in accordance with the Treaty. We did not reverse her work."

Caterine decided she needed to get away from the Congress right then and there. Of course she recalled her intent to do so before stasis, but now she made the resolve official in her mind. "When can I leave?"


	2. Chapter 1

**AN: Heyy, so I guess I'm gonna go with monthlyish updates. I think that's about what I did with Curiosity. Anyway. My birthday was just last week, and I'm finally signed up for driving classes starting on Monday...I've been busy, I will be busy, essentially. But, regardless of my real life, I put in some more world building bits in this chapter. I kind of love world building; it's one of my favorite things to do. Hopefully my work for this story is up to par with...idk really, everyone's standards? Yeah. Oh, and sorry about how short this is. It was just a good place to end the chapter... Okay, enjoy, leave me kind and constructive feedback please!**

The Citizenship Offices of the Underneath were housed in a tall and dark building, as most buildings in the Underneath were; the façade was of rust-colored brick and dark gray stone accents, with stories upon stories of shadowy, glass-paned windows. The etched letters of the inlaid stone sign next to the glass and gold revolving door that denoted the building's address were full of bone dust, another common feature of anything in the Underneath. Bone dust and tall, stone buildings: two of the characteristic quirks of the city, besides the prominent lack of any humans.

When Dr. Awojobi released Caterine from the hospital, the vampire took up residence with her old fairy friend, the fairy who stored most of Cat's belongings for her. Still resolute in her decision, she went out on a visit to the Citizenship Offices as soon as she could. With determination and a little nervousness in her metaphorical gut (her stomach was unable to feel really upset and fluttery as it could during her previous life), Cat pushed through the revolving door and walked across the polished stone floor towards an available skeleton at the desk, swerving around two dwarves and a wizard on her way.

"Excuse me," she said, causing the skeleton to turn its eye sockets in her direction, "I'm interested in renouncing my citizenship."

The skeleton looked blankly at her for a moment before clacking his jaw and sliding open a filing cabinet drawer behind the desk. "Well now," he said, "that's not something we hear very often around here. I'll have to look up the protocol for renouncing citizenship...you know, the last time anyone wanted to stop being a citizen of the Underneath was about a century ago, I think. Ah, here we go." The skeleton lifted a large binder out of the drawer and set it on the desk in front of himself with a low and dusty thud. "Let's just...see here..." he muttered, flipping the binder open and running a finger bone down colored plastic tabs. "Hah, that's it!" The skeleton, Horace, according to the name tag fastened to one of his ribs, flipped a large chunk of the binder to reveal a page titled "How to Renounce Citizenship."

"So...what do I need to do?" Cat asked, leaning forward on the counter.

Horace spun the binder so she could read it. "You'll need to fill out a few forms, meet with a Congressperson, remove all of your property from any residences or storage spaces in the Underneath, and dissolve your citizenship ring in the abyss. Not too difficult," he summarized as Cat scanned the page herself. "Let me just get you those forms, and then we can schedule a meeting with a Congressperson. The Congressperson will take care of the abyss thing with you as I understand it." He bent again to search through a few more filing cabinet drawers. Horace straightened back up with about fifteen sheets of paper held between his finger bones and handed them over with one of the toothy grins skeletons everywhere are known for.

"Thank you so much," Cat said, sliding the binder back to the skeleton.

"My pleasure," he answered, dropping the binder into its metal drawer with a bang. "Now, about that appointment..." He looked down at the large desk calendar that Cat hadn't even realized was there. "Do you think," here he flipped a few pages forward, "that two Wednesdays from now is enough time for you to collect all of your belongings and arrange for their transfer to the Above?"

"It should be."

"Very well, I'll schedule an appointment for you with Congresself Loxariad. He's an elementi; very nice man."

"Alright. I'll come here?"

"That's right."

Caterine nodded. "Perfect. Thank you for your help, Horace."

"My pleasure, Madam. Have a good day!"

She had already turned to leave, and returned his sentiments over her shoulder as she exited the Citizenship Offices. With sure steps, Cat strode down the street, wary of the death stench coming from every zombie she passed, and found her way out of the Congress district and into the residential district. Many people tipped hats or waved or said a brief greeting as they passed her; a greater vampire is nothing to sneeze at, and she was one of very few known greater vampires. Cat waved back or nodded to each person she noticed, but stayed away from any sort of conversation. The forms in her trusty leather bag weighed heavily on her mind, and she preferred to fill them out as soon as possible.

In almost no time at all, Caterine reached the tall and slightly crooked-looking apartment building her friend lived in. Up five flights of stairs, down the hall, second door on the left. The vampire knocked politely, and the resident fairy opened the door with a creak.

"Caterine, you're back!" she said, opening the door wider for her friend. "You know, most government business takes a lot longer than half an hour, but I'm glad you got everything sorted!"

"Thank you, Laurel, but I have to return in about two weeks for an appointment with a Congresself. I've got a whole stack of forms to fill out in the meantime."

Laurel nodded, iridescent wings fluttering slightly. "That explains it, then. I suppose you'll have to move out, too? All your stuff, I mean."

"It all has to get to the Above before my appointment," Cat confirmed. "Which reminds me: I have to figure out where I'll send my stuff, where I'll go, who I'll stay with..."

Laurel shut the apartment door and flitted to the table. "Let's have a look at these forms, first," she said, sitting in one of the wooden kitchen chairs.

Caterine nodded, joined her friend, produced the forms, and took the proffered pen Laurel suddenly had in her hand. About half of the forms were similar to the sort she always received after a reawakening, some others were about her property, a few more dealt with any debt or bills she might have to pay, and one crucial form actually talked about Cat's main goal, renouncing her citizenship. Laurel helped as much as she could, but by the end of the day, Cat had only finished filling out seven of the sixteen forms required. She hadn't even begun to think about where she would go, either.


	3. Chapter 2

**AN: Okay, so an apology is in order, I know. School started and all the plot bunnies have been sucked out of me; besides, I get to deal with a terrible APUSH teacher and a brand-spankin'-new physics teacher this year, so... You could say I've been pretty stressed lately. So this chapter is short af and kind of a (necessary) filler, so I'm sorry about that, but it needs to be done, especially to give you SOMETHING while I try to coax a longer and more interesting chapter from my head for next month, ideally. Thanksgiving break has officially begun, so I'll try to get some writing done this week. Enjoy!**

A week passed. Cat wracked her mind over that time for anyone she knew who wasn't connected to the Underneath. It wasn't that there wasn't anyone rouge out there; it was just that after a thousand years, she knew a lot of people, many of them indeed rogue, but she trusted very few of them. The vampire who turned her in the first place was out of the question, of course. She wasn't even sure if he was around anymore anyway. She had a few rogue mages she knew of, but, understandably, she wasn't exactly fond of dealing with them. Here and there around the world she had some friends, but she wasn't keen on being across the globe from her goal, England.

On Wednesday afternoon, as Cat sat in Laurel's kitchen with a glass of blood and six days until she was to leave, she was struck with a solution, shocked she hadn't remembered sooner: why not ask Jean?

She'd met Jean, a France-based vampire, years upon years upon years upon years upon years ago, just decades before the French Wars of Religion. They'd bonded over their love of new medical discoveries, especially as medically-minded vampires were hard to find. Most avoided the temptation of blood that practicing medicine brought. At the time, Jean was still under the Treaty; Cat knew he went rogue sometime during the French Revolution, upset with the Underneath's lack of intervention as he watched Robespierre destroying French civilization with his Reign of Terror. She'd fallen out of contact with him in the late 19th century, but she was sure he was still around. Jean was smart and quick and had been around since slightly before the Hundred Year's War, old enough to use the ages-old family inheritance trick to accumulate plenty of wealth for himself, along with a suitable cover.

Getting in touch with him would be the difficult part. Cat furrowed her brow as she thought. Email would be impossible; the Reigning Congress only updated the most basic records of its expatriates. A letter might be doable as long as she could find his address. That would entail a visit to the Records Hall as rogue information could only be accessed in person, not online, due to some frankly pointless privacy law or another. The Records Hall was like a glorified library of almanacs, phone books, newspapers, and ex-citizen files, among probably many other things Cat had no interest in, and in her entire millennium-plus, Cat had accessed the Records Hall, online or in person, only about a handful of times. If she did manage to find a current address for her old friend, she'd have to get the letter to him somehow within a day or two so he could have as much time as possible to contact her back. It was a risk, and Cat wasn't sure if she really wanted to take it. Would it be worth it? Would Jean even agree to take her on as a housemate for an indefinite amount of time?

A little later, Laurel and Cat discussed the matter, and they came to the conclusion that the risk would be worth it; Jean would be the best solution for the situation at hand. The trouble, Laurel agreed, would be contacting him.

"You're right about the Records Hall. We'll have to do some digging to find him," Laurel said at dinner that night. Cat of course wasn't eating anything, but Laurel was tucking into a delicious-looking vegetable pasta dish. "I don't think anything in Records has been reorganized since the 1600s or some craziness like that; they just keep stuffing overflowing stuff into the general location of where it should be. The last time I went there it took me all day just to find a couple old newspaper articles."

"Great," Cat huffed. "We'll probably need two or three days to find Jean's file then."

Laurel hummed. "Not necessarily. I hear the rogue records are pretty well-kept, if only because there's relatively few of them. They say only about one person goes rogue every century now. Of course, that could just be propaganda…" she said, trailing off and ending her sentence with a large bite of fettuccini.

The two dedicated the next day to record sifting, and they showed up at the Records Hall of the Underneath early in the day. Like any building, it was tall, gray stone, and imposing. Inside, surrounded by floating dust and the smell of old paper, facing aisle after aisle after aisle of cubbies of papers, the wooden frames reaching nearly to the stories-high ceiling, incredibly frail-looking rolling ladders rising precariously to the top of the labyrinth, the feeling was closer to the effect of walking into an old book store: quieting, warming, comfortingly suffocating. To Cat anyway; Laurel coughed and grimaced, muttering about "getting out of this place as soon as we can."

It took half the day to even find the section of records on rogues. It was surprisingly large; it seemed the Reigning Congress didn't like to correct common misconceptions that made them look better. With the shelves four stories tall, and the section taking up a large amount of space, finding Jean's information could take forever. The shelves' labels were only slightly helpful: they simply said "Expatriates" with a range of years scrawled below, but Cat picked up a random string-bound stack of documents from a cubby claiming to hold "Expatriates 100 B.C. - 0" and groaned when the file claimed to be that of a rogue from the year 107 AD.

"So…when did you say Jean went rogue?" Laurel asked.

Cat gazed upward at the towering shelves, feeling a hint of vertigo. "The Reign of Terror. 1794."

The fairy nodded, and fluttered her wings. "I guess we'd better start looking, then," she said, and flitted upwards to start scanning the shelves for any years close to 1794.


End file.
